[tptacek]

Your comment is very emphatic, but you didn't rebut either of my points:

* 120k will barely pay the fully loaded cost of a single engineer

* A good freelancer can generate 120k above living expenses in a year

Your response was "the fully loaded cost of an engineer is irrelevant". That's a weird argument, given that the cost of engineers dominates the expenses of early-stage startups.

[waterlesscloud]

That's cool and all, but what matters to a very early stage startup isn't the cost of hiring an engineer, it's covering the founders' living expenses and whatever business expenses arise (which may be very small).

You know this, so I'm not sure why you're off on a tangent about things that don't normally apply in these situations.

[tptacek]

There was a long comment here, but I found a better way to make my point:

If I gave you $120k to start a company with 1-2 other people, and you had no other funding commitments, I don't think I'd be changing your odds all that much.

But I have no trouble believing that when YC gives founders $120k, they are changing the odds significantly.